"Yes, now I can buy the little red hatchet," said the little boy; and he could scarcely wait to dress and eat his breakfast before he started out to the store. The ten pennies were in his pocket and they jingled merrily as the little boy ran down the road. "Ten of us are here! Ten of us are here!"—this is what they seemed to say, and the boy laughed to hear them.
"Perhaps I'll cut down a tree with my little red hatchet," he thought, as he ran.
It was early in the morning when he reached the town, but the stores were open, and the men who sold things on the street were already calling their wares. One was a ragman. "Rags, rags!" he called. Another was a pieman. He had his good things in a cart that he pushed before him. There were fresh raspberry tarts in his cart that day, and every now and then he called:—
"Tarts, tarts, raspberry tarts! A tart for a penny and a penny for a tart. Tarts, tarts, raspberry tarts! A tart for a penny and a penny for a tart!" The little boy stopped to listen. "Tarts, tarts, raspberry tarts!" Oh, how delicious they looked—those penny tarts in the pieman's cart!
"Will you have a tart, little master?" asked the pieman.
The little boy put his hand in his pocket and drew it out; then he put it back and drew it out again. This time a penny came with it. "Yes, if you please," he said to the pieman. "I want a raspberry tart." A nice, sweet, juicy three-cornered raspberry tart! The little boy had eaten every crumb of it when he came to the store where the little red hatchet lay in the window.
As soon as he saw the hatchet he put his hand into his pocket again and jingled his pennies. "One of us is gone! One of us is gone!" said the pennies as plainly as they could; but the little boy sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and counted them. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine." Then he went into the store. The man who had told him the price of the hatchet was not there, but a clerk came to wait on him.
"Are there any nine-penny hatchets?" asked the little boy.
"No," said the clerk; "all the little hatchets are ten cents, and cheap at that. Would you like one to-day?" But the little boy shook his head and went out of the store. The pennies did not jingle in his pocket, and his eyes were full of tears. He was just getting his handkerchief out to wipe them away when he met an old woman.